The Remedy
by SeductiveCurse
Summary: Needing to rebuild after the crippling battle with Anubis's army, Ardeth's tribe looks to him for guidance. It takes a conversation with one of his own for him to realize that he is capable of bringing them back from the brink of collapse.


**Disclaimer:** The Mummy and the Mummy Returns were created by amazing people that are not me. However, Ardeth's appeal is due to none other than the incredible Oded Fehr who deserves more recognition than he has.

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A paradise in the desert. That was what Ahm Shere was supposed to be. It was interesting how paradise seemed to be more of a mind set than something that was tangible, describable, even real. It was interesting how a supposed paradise brought the death of so many people through out the years. Armies of the most powerful nations, world powers, were crushed. Now, so many years later, this "paradise" nearly destroyed the Medjai race in its entirety.

There were more bodies than could be brought back left littering the hot, endless sands of the Sahara. Each tribe was told through whatever survivors returned that not all of their men would be coming home. Mothers learned that they would never see their sons again. Sisters bitterly remembered the stupid arguments that they had brought up throughout the years. Lovers longingly clung to the memories and wished desperately that they could have said just one more good bye.

That was not the sort of thing one would expect from a paradise. A paradise was supposed to be beautiful, but more importantly, harmless.

It was the desert itself that was Ardeth's paradise. He had grown up with it, learning all of its secrets. Never had it betrayed him. Never had it killed so many of his people.

Now, safe and secure at the dunes that had been his tribe's land for the past two rainy seasons, he found himself aching to leave and return to his desert wanderings. He didn't know how to settle down, none of his people did. The only problem was that the threat of the Creature was finally over according to the O'Connells who had seen him tumble down the passage into hell. Preventing him from rising up was all that he had known. What was he supposed to do with the rest of his life?

His thoughts flickered briefly to the adolescents and children of the twelve tribes. They were the only ones that remained with the ability to carry on the Medjai heritage. Like all the others before them, the boys would be trained in the arts of battle and desert survival while the women shrank into the background.

At least, those had been the thoughts before the Medjais' returns to their tribes where they discovered that in their prolonged absences, their tribes had scarcely fared better than them. Nomadic thieves had attacked one night, raping women before their children's eyes and killing those that dared to fight back. It became devastatingly clear that, if the Medjai race was to survive, training the boys alone would not be enough.

Scattered rumors spread like wildfire; the women were to be trained as well. Perhaps slowly, painfully slowly, the Medjai would return to their former strength.

Ardeth let out a light breath that he could all but see traveling across the sands to mingle with the desert wind. Folding his arms across his chest, he bent his head, eyes closed. He had returned to his tribe only to realize that they now looked to him for the answers. They all trusted him to lead them all down the path that would rebuild their confidence in themselves and the power of their ways.

They believed that he would be able to do things that he could not. He could lead them through the desert. He could train them in battle and in ways to combat the undead. It almost humiliated him to realize that he could not rebuild what they had lost.

How was he supposed to turn to each and every one of them, look them dead in the eye, and say that he couldn't do what they were asking?

Allah forgive him, but he was tempted to go somewhere, anywhere, where he would be free of the responsibilities that they had placed upon him and would not be the one to let them all down. What he knew was the life of a nomad. That would change completely if he would now have the weight of his tribe's future resting on his shoulders alone.

Here he was, already with his back turned on his tribes and their tents. All it would take was one step. After that, there would be nothing - and no one - left to hold him back. Just one -

A small noise behind him made him abandon his thoughts and label them for what they were: ridiculous. The sound was hardly anything more than the soft rustling of cloths, but it was enough for his warrior hardened ears to catch. He could hear the nearly soundless shifting of sand as someone approached him. There was only one person that walked with that limp, a limp due to a six inch wound over the left knee that never had and never would heal properly.

Ardeth opened his eyes, staring over what seemed to be endless sand as he waited for the person to reach him.

"Adira," he greeted in his low voice, gaze never shifting as a young woman stopped along side him. She was cloaked in a dark brown _niqab_, cloths that Ardeth had overheard some of the younger women calling "sacks" in a rather unaffectionate way. Only her eyes were revealed - and a bit of the bridge of her nose if one were to get technical. Therefore, Adira, and most of the other women, had long since learned how to smile with their eyes.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" she murmured, eyes shining in her strange smile as her line of sight drifted lazily across the landscape with an intensity that seemed to notice every grain of sand. Ardeth let out a soft chuckle, eyes crinkling in a fond gesture.

"You know my weakness."

"What's it like?" she asked suddenly, tearing her eyes off of the horizon to stare at him piercingly.

Ardeth slowly turned his head, raising an eyebrow. "What is what like, Adira?"

"Being out there alone," she responded, voice soft as she once again looked longingly across the desert. "Being out there with only yourself and the freedom of no restraints. I've traveled the desert with the tribe, but every time I see you or one of the other men leaving on their own, I wish that I could be in that position."

"You would find that it is just as you envisioned it," the Medjai said. The pitch of his voice began dropping, as happened for him when he got distracted or began talking more to himself than anyone else. "You find yourself in a state of dreaming, your mind wanders until you find yourself traveling through the wind, going where you please, doing only as you wish. The desert surrounds you, wrapping you in sands of illusion and making you feel like for only one moment, all that matters is you."

"But the desert is dangerous. It kills before you even realize that you are dying," Adira whispered.

"The Sahara does not betray our tribe. She is only dangerous to strangers trespassing within her sands."

Adira nodded absentmindedly, a wistful look in her eyes as she felt a tug on her heartstrings, her very core telling her that it would be alright to disappear and never face the past again.

"One day, I shall show you the desert," Ardeth said, looking over at her and trying to pry away the melancholic barrier that she had erected.

When the young woman turned to face him, her eyes, although full of respect for the Medjai that was five years her senior, held a sharp edge that would allow for no lies.

"I needed to talk to you," she began, but when their eyes met, she broke off and found herself suddenly close to tears. Rather than allow herself to seem weak, Adira forced away the emotion. She straightened and unhooked her cloth veil from the side of her _niqab_ to allow her face to be visible. "Ahm Shere and the Creature..."

Ardeth extended a hand, looking her dead in the eye even as he picked up the loose end of the veil and his calloused fingers carefully attached it once more behind her ear, restoring the privacy it gave her flickering emotions. "I would have told you about your brother myself-"

"I knew when he wasn't the first to return for me," she interrupted.

Due to the snap of her voice, Ardeth was half expecting to see her defiantly remove her veil again and talk to him like an equal, or even superior, but instead, he noticed to his surprise that her hands had begun shaking and that her breaths had become less regular. The next moment, it seemed, her eyelashes had clumped together with tears in thick masses and she was looking away, shielding her eyes from him. When she straightened once more, her tears had stopped, but they had left wet smears around her eyes from where they had hastily been rubbed.

"I just wanted to hear from you that he died with honor," Adira finished shakily.

"Of course he did, Adira."

She smiled, but the forced action did not have the strength to reach her eyes and went unnoticed by the Medjai. Sensing that she did not have the closure that she had desired, Ardeth pressed his lips together - lips that many of the tribe's women were quite jealous of - and let out a slow breath as he looked out over the endless sands.

"We all went into that battle prepared to die," he continued at last. "Do not think that there is something that your brother would have said that went unspoken."

"Were you afraid?"

Ardeth was almost taken aback by her sudden question, for it was one of the last things that he was expecting her to say. He furrowed his eyebrows together and quickly looked back at her curiously before shaking his head quizically.

"We were terrified," was the honest reply. "They came in a second wave and I realized that all of our warriors were willing to die at my command. I realized that..."

She turned to him, eyes showing her eagerness to pull any and all knowledge from him as he was her only source to the outside world, her only source for any information at all about things happening outside of her tribe's sheltered environment. "What did you realize?"

"That there were many things left for me to live for that I never even realized existed."

Something in his tone, the way his sentence concluded, kept Adira from pressing the matter any further. A man's last thoughts, or what he thought would be his last thoughts, were no business but his own. Allah forgive the one who had the heartlessness to pry someone for matters that personal.

The Medjai watched as the young woman's dark eyes narrowed in a brief expression of pain. She shifted her weight off her bad leg, never once making a sound regarding the pain her knee must have cost and absentmindedly began rotating it to work off the built up tension. His gaze dropped at her actions. Now he remembered what it was that he needed to tell her, but he still did not know how to go about doing it.

"Lock Nah was with them," he said bluntly.

Terror flashing across her face, she froze. It wasn't Ardeth's imagination either that saw her hands shaking yet again as she turned to face him, locking their eyes to be confident that there would be no underlying factors that went by unnoticed. "Lock Nah?"

The Medjai nodded solemnly.

Adira's eyes hardened as the fear left to be replaced with a throbbing anger. "And did you, Ardeth, remember what you vowed to do?"

"He is dead, Adira," he replied lowly, his voice grating in his throat as he remembered the contempt in which the now dead man eyed him at the O'Connell's mansion. "You can be sure of it."

"Praise Allah," she responded bitterly. "It is only seven years too late."

Wind swept by the two with a sudden ferocity that seemed to come from the heavens themselves, as if their God himself had taken offense at their words. The mere thought that he would ever support the killing of another seemed to be reflected in that momentary angry burst that swept across the desert, flinging sand around their ankles. Sying down just as quickly as it came, it left no effect on the two.

"Your scars will heal," Ardeth said soothingly. Both knew, of course, that he did not mean the ugly purple mark on her knee, but the emotional ones that spawned from what she and many of the other women had to endure at the heartless Lock Nah's hands.

"Be thankful that I can heal," she replied. Her words lapped at the tail of his, following them with a speed that implied that she had given no thought to what had happened to her, especially considering that history had all but repeated itself with the Medjais' most recent departure and the nomadic attack.

If she would have thought, even for a moment, she would never have allowed her hurt to become an angry bite as she sneered, "Be thankful that I am not like your sister."

Ardeth tensed as she verbally wandered into forbidden territory. The look he threw her, instant punishment for the naming of the dead in such a callous way, made Adira regret her words and shrink back, almost expecting an attack for her outburst.

Instead, complete silence followed. Even breathing, it seemed, would not do anything to destroy it. The tension it caused became incredible, powerful enough to crack through anything tangible and the sharp tongued woman was the first in its path.

"Ardeth," she whispered, hesitating when his expression did not even flicker. "Forgive me, I-"

"Lock Nah is dead," he repeated, ignoring her attempt at an apology. Wordlessly, he took in her second flinch due to his sharpness. He would have allowed her to walk away then, but felt a sudden guilt for his cutting tone as he remembered her brother's last words.

_Protect her_, he had said before what would be his last battle._ Keep her safe for me._

Here now stood Ardeth Bay of the Medjai, fearless warrior of God, angry at a woman for speaking of one that had died years ago. His dishonor could only be increased by the fact that he had failed in the simple task her brother had given him.

"The tribe's honor has been avenged," he continued in a lower, more gentle tone. "As has yours."

"No," she said, using the same tone that she had in her attempt at an apology. "It never can be."

In her brief silence as she inhaled, about to continue off on a tangent, her eyes flickered as she realized the irony of her statement and who it was coming from. Strange as it must have appeared, she began to laugh quietly, scarcely more than a chuckle as a new, more powerful, truth dawned on her.

Her fingers found the hem of her veil and she tugged on it sharply, pulling the cloth away from her face. It hung ungracefully, with a sagged appearance as the cloth folded awkwardly to accommodate for its partial removal.

"What dignity is there left for me to preserve? How can veiling myself help me now?" she asked, voicing her thoughts.

Ardeth watched her in interested curiosity, taking in her words and change of attitude. It was almost inconceivable that this woman, this permanently unclean, scarred woman would have made him realize all the answers that he searched for. Her condition and the almost new life that she would have to forge because of it mirrored his just enough to have her actions be applicable to his.

"Perhaps it is not help that you need," he murmured, hoping that Adira would believe that she was the only one that he was referring to. "You know what you must do and help will not make the transition any less painful."

She hesitated, words that would give away her knowledge on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she held them back while curving her revealed lips into a small smile. "I was terrified that everyone would be killed and that I would be alone. Now I see that having someone around me does not make me feel more capable."

"Listen to me," Ardeth said. He extended his arms, turning both his body and hers as he placed his battle weary hands on her shoulders to keep her from moving away. "You do not need to prove yourself. Doing and being is enough."

The young woman nodded, eyeing her mentor and friend carefully. "You know your path. Follow it."

In the brief confusion visible on the Medjai's face, curiosity as to how she had seen through his facade and known that he also had been talking about himself, Adira set her hands on his chest and pushed away.

"Adira," he began only to be stopped by a slight shake of her head.

"Sometimes the unspoken words do not need life."

As she walked back to the encampment, Ardeth lowered his head, examining the ground at his feet. Times like these were when he desired the ability to communicate even if only to help understand what he was thinking. His knowledge on the complexity of human thoughts, both his and of others, was fairly fundamental, revolving around survival and battle leadership.

Regarding things that required more tact, he was much better at being blunt. Even if it resulted in scaring small children by telling them that they had unleashed the apocalypse, he gave it no hesitation.

When he first heard Adira approaching, he had hoped that talking to her would distract him and give him time to consult the remaining elders as to the best course of action. Instead, she had helped him come to a decision. Unintentionally, she had manipulated him to embrace the conclusion that he already knew that he had to make.

Ardeth made a small sound, a quick outburst of air that displayed his twisted amusement. All along, he had known that he would accept the responsibilities that his tribe had laid at his feet. He simply had not acknowledged it.

The dry desert wind rustled the cloths of his robes around him as he looked up, insatiate eyes devouring the landscape before him. He may have loved the desert, but his duties as a man, leader and Medjai came first. Now he was able to recognize that it would not mean abandoning everything that he desired.

No, it meant embracing it and allowing others to have the ability to admire it as well.

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When I started writing this... It ended quite differently. Even now, I'm not sure which ending I preferred. However, I had a lot of fun trying to understand Ardeth and how he would interact with someone else around such delicate matters. Seriously though, there were many questions left unanswered in the Mummy Returns and I felt that I should try to answer some of them. Do I like this story and how it came out? I'm not sure. Maybe I'll take it down sometime when better inspiration hits me. But for now, this it.


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